ust forward of the mainmast were what a painter would call the deeper
shades of the picture, for there the black cook and his equally sable
adjunct, the cook's mate, held their vaporous and dish-washing levee;
while forth from the cloudy sanctuary occasionally pealed a burst of
obstreporous laughter, that the most unpractised hearer might swear came
from the lungs of a negro, without the trouble of invading their
premises for further evidence. Upon either of these culinary worthies,
to use the somewhat hyperbolical language of sailors, "lampblack would
make a white mark."

I cannot avoid taking occasion to remark here, that sailors, like the
orientals, are exceedingly addicted to the use of tropes and figures of
speech, to similes and metaphors. In fact, if any gentleman was about
compiling a treatise on elocution, I would recommend to him to pass a
year or two on board one of our men of war, where he would daily hear
specimens of eloquence, known and unknown to exclusively terrestrial
orators, whether in the halls of Congress, at a public dinner-table, or
on a stump. There is the _narratio_, or anecdote, or sometimes the _long
yarn_; the _aprosiopesis_, or sudden pause, very powerful when in good
hands; the _apostrophe_, or addressing an absent person as though he was
present; the _obtestatio_ and _invocatio_, two different modes of
invoking the gods celestial or infernal; and lastly, the _simile_, or
comparison, in which sailors are a thousand times more fruitful than
Homer himself. The steward--who came up with the breakfast-dishes, &c.,
or "dog-basket," as it is called by them of the forecastle--was a
thought lighter skinned than the cooks.

The crew were lounging about the forecastle and weather gangway; some
walking fore and aft, with their hands in their jacket pockets, some
washing or mending their clothes, and some stretched out in the sun,
chatting and laughing in utter disregard and carelessness of what
to-morrow might bring forth, and most literally obeying the divine
command, to "take no thought of what they should eat, or what they
should drink, or wherewithal they should be clothed."

The crew mustered forty-four in number; for forty years since, ships
that traded to the coast of California, or any part of His Catholic
Majesty's American possessions, or to the North West Coast, calculated
upon a brush, either with the guarda-costas or the savages, before their
voyage was up, and accordingly went well ma